First of all, let me tell you what this isn't. It's not some "I-was-lost-and-now-I'm-found" sob story. These days, many people reach out to faith "to find peace". I had too much peace in my life already. In faith, I was looking to be troubled – on behalf of other people. Every film and pop starlet, trawling after a reason to exist, says, "I'm not religious – but I am spiritual". I don't have a spiritual bone in my body; but what I am, is religious. I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. I'm a Christian Zionist, as well as a Christian feminist and a Christian socialist. But over the past two decades, almost without me knowing it, the Christian part has become the most important.

These desperately-seeking-something starlets go about seeking enlightenment the wrong way; they see religion as a thing that will take them deeper into themselves, give them more "me" time. No wonder they never find what they're looking for; happiness, as survey after survey shows (the latest, in April 2008, by the Royal Economic Society), is certainly found more often in the religious than the non-religious. But it must be a faith that encourages one to transcend the self rather than dwell even deeper on it, be it in the shape of philanthropy, voluntary work or, in my case, both.

Once, of course, I was a teenage atheist; and it brings me no shame to say that, but it certainly makes me smile. I grew up, and stopped being an atheist, in my 20s, in the 1980s. But it was only when my parents died, within a year of each other at the turn of the century, that I became religious. I'm going to be a bit un-Christian here, but nothing makes me hoot, mock and retch like people who bleat that they stopped believing in God when their parents died. Don't get me wrong – if a parent buries a child and rails against God, I can see why. But to lose one's faith because of the death of a parent? That's what old people do, the swine, they die on you! And don't tell me about loving your parents – I loved mine just fine. I am an only child who, well into her early 20s, simply assumed that when the surviving parent kicked the bucket, I would quite cold-bloodedly top myself because life would be simply incomprehensible without them. But when my father died in 1999 and my mother in 2000, I stood in the same church twice in two years and felt the same sense of what I can best describe as joy as I watched the two coffins move away from me. While all around me wept, I was filled with the absolute certainty that they were on their way to a better place. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud, both times. Boy, with a nasty rep like mine, how great would that have come across to assembled friends and family.

But it wasn't nasty ... it was faith.

Although it is often they who accuse us of being babyish, needing a big daddy in the sky to lean on, there is something profoundly immature about atheists. That surly, self-satisfied certainty that insists that one is the first person, ever, to see with a white-hot, burning clarity straight to the heart of society's attempts to manipulate and control us all for its own ends.

Today, atheism is big business with the success of books like The God Delusion. If you want to get ahead, be a heretic! Something, however, has been lost. Say the word "atheist" 100 years ago and it conjured up a vision of sexy, freewheeling rebels celebrating life, love and creativity in their rejection of a higher power. Say it now and a vision of fun-hating killjoys, desperately scared that somewhere a Christian is having a good time by singing lustily in church on a Sunday morning, comes to mind. And, sadly, the alleged "humanist morality" never happened – to this day, 80% of all unpaid and unself-interested voluntary and charity work is faith-driven.

The problem, which western atheists miss, is that to be a heretic here requires no bravery whatsoever. On the contrary, when the mocking of Judeo-Christian belief is a mainstay of prime-time entertainment and has been so since The Life of Brian, being an atheist in the west can easily be seen as a desire to be on the winning side.

When one considers the shocking plight of British Muslims who seek to convert to Christianity, it seems to me quite offensive that Christianity should be dismissed by Dawkins and his like in the same breath as Islam. Similarly, Dawkins' critique of Judaism seems way too aggressive, when one compares it to the excesses of other belief systems. The oldest and least evangelical of the monotheistic religions, it is also arguably the most civilised and liberal; there are female judges and rabbis in the Old Testament, which makes the C of E's foot-dragging over the ordination of women look a bit sad – and let's not even mention the Catholic and Muslim attitude to women being allowed to preach. Interestingly, the only truly brave, non-narcissistic atheists I can think of are apostates – both women, both born Muslims. While their western white brothers in non-belief caper around fancying themselves, like superannuated rock stars, with the super-smug sense of safety that being an atheist in a Protestant country bestows, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji move from safe house to safe house – in fear of their lives rather than bad book reviews.

So that's my story. It's not a perfect church, but it's my church. And even though I'd prefer a few more hymns along the lines of Onward Christian Soldiers of a Sunday, I don't mind waiting. Unlike the wretched Church of Rome, our leaders don't hold onto the top spot till they peg out, so, hopefully, Bishops Sentamu or Nazir-Ali will be leading our raggle-taggle legions soon. I've come to the conclusion that the rejuvenation of our church will come from its non-white leaders and worshippers, unburdened as they are with pallid guilt.

Meanwhile, I'm about to start my second volunteer job, and I shall doubtless also continue to give away money like a sailor on shore leave. It's not so much the camel and the eye of the needle jive I subscribe to – more the great Andrew Carnegie's strict Protestant dictum: "He who dies rich dies shamed."

My favourite vicar, the Reverend Gavin Ashenden of Sussex University, never says, "I am a Christian," but rather "I'm trying to be a Christian". Me too. Between the darkness that faces me from within and the darkness that faces me from without, it may just prove to be the hardest thing I've ever done. I love it.